


That's How I Know (You Are The One)

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M, Flash Forward, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 16:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12939078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: "We could get married butt-naked in the ocean at this point. We could eat that unicorn cake Ruth liked. Furguson could meow our freakin’ vows. I don’t care.”SEASON SEVEN FIC, FOUR YEARS FORWARD.





	That's How I Know (You Are The One)

**Author's Note:**

> A little note from me to all of you:
> 
> Life has been SO hectic. I know a lot of fic authors say that when they slack on updates, or when they're just not motivated. I have been both of those things among just busy - slacking and unmotivated. I really, truly try best to deliver QUALITY content to you all; work I can be proud of and work you can all remember as something good, something that made you *feel* something. 
> 
> Obviously, New Girl is ending and even though I've written so much fic (30+!!!) for the show, I have SO many more ideas. Unfortunately, 99% of those ideas sound better in my head. Writing them into a story has been very hard for me, lately. I will blame it on my actual life being really busy, but also because I feel like I started something I cannot end right now.
> 
> I created my latest multi-chapter fic ([Socalyalcon VII: The Field Trip](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11901939)) with the intent to finish, obviously. I have written out so many possible scenarios for this fic but every time I try one out, it never feels complete. I want my writing to be well-rounded, complete, and, like I said before, a story you can all feel something from. Until I can properly do that, that fic will be on a little hiatus.
> 
> BUT. GOOD NEWS. I have been creating this baby for some time now, and I'm so excited to share it with you. This is a season seven, four-years-later fic, featuring (*SPOILER ALERT*) Ruth Schmidt, because how could I not?
> 
> I understand that it's disappointing to read four chapters of a story that was *going somewhere* (at least...I hope it was!) and it just stops, but I hope you can read this and let it bring you some NG happiness. :)
> 
> Who knows... Maybe publishing this baby will help me get out of my ~writing funk.
> 
> Please, please, let me know if you enjoyed this. You all make my heart happy, especially in the rougher times. LOVE YOU, ROOMFRIENDS. :D :D :D

**_ABOUT FOUR YEARS LATER . . . . ._ **

  
Nick straightens his tie (a tie, he’s wearing a _tie_ ) and takes a deep breath. He holds out his palm and traces the words “YOU GOT THIS” with his index finger.  
  
“Are you tracing positive affirmations onto your hand again?”  
  
He squints. He hates how much this woman knows about him, but he really loves it. (And her. He’s spent an entire four years just… loving her.)  
  
“This new editor hates my work, Jess.”  
  
“He doesn’t _hate it_ , he just called Pepperwood like, ten different things that meant ‘vagina’,” she assures him, a hand on the small of his back as they walk into the lobby where his new editor works.  
  
“Is it any surprise he loves Jessica Knight, though?”, Nick asks her. Jessica Knight is the book version of...well...Jess. His Jess. Of _course_ she’s likable.  
  
“Not really,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek, and then Nick gets called into the editor’s office.  
  
Jess nudges him in the arm, and then she asks, “Should I come with?”  
  
He takes a breath and shakes his head. “I should do this one alone, Jess.”

—

  
“Schmidt, I’m not saying your three-year-old is my birth control, but…”  
  
“Your three-year-old is Aly’s birth control,” Winston finishes. “She won’t even let me get any after eight P.M. anymore.”  
  
“Sperm is very awake in the late evening hours, Winston,” Aly says, pushing the dirty napkin Cece and Schmidt’s daughter is shoving toward her face. “Ew! Is that a spaghetti sauce stain or weird diarrhea? Are you still in diapers, you little -”  
  
“It’s not mine,” debates Ruth, and for three, she’s got quite the mouth. “It's Uncle Wimstom’s, daddy.” (She’s still working on that one.)  
  
“Ruthie, my angel, what would we do without you?” Schmidt asks, shaking his head and grabbing the napkin from his daughter. "Wimstom, you're a friggin' mess. You have my baby girl playing housekeeper?"  
  
"It's been a little chaotic around here, dude. We've been watching Ruth for five days. I think we forgot to eat by day three, and Aly must've threatened to leave me more than Nick threatens to stop being your friend every time you show up to his place when he and Jess are in the middle of doing it."  
  
"Wait. Five days?! It felt like _five-thousand_ ," whines Aly, and when Ruth hears her comment, she sticks her tongue out at her - behind her dad's back, of course.  
  
"You know, Cece isn't sold on Baby Schmidt Numero Dos yet, you guys," Schmidt says to Aly and Winston with a whisper. "She tried to convince me to get snipped last week and she made me use a freakin’ condom all vacation-long.”  
  
"Maybe it's because you already gave birth to that little devi -- Ruth, put down my bra! Those are big girl clothes!"  
  
"Ruth, sweetie, remember what mommy said about touching stuff that isn't yours?", Schmidt asks her.  
  
"Yeah," she answers sweetly, dropping Aly's bra. "' _Go for it, you're gonna touch it anyway when I'm not lookin_ '''," she says in a louder, squeakier voice that's supposed to be her mom's.  
  
Winston cracks up quietly, and Aly nudges Schmidt. "You guys should totally have another one of those, man."

—

  
Cece pours Jess another glass of wine and then fills her own glass too. "So," she says, smacking her lips together, "how'd it go today?"  
  
"I could ask you the same thing. _Aly and Winston_? Really, Ceec? You know I love them, but Nick and I have a guest bedroom _just_ for your kid, at this point. We could've watched her."  
  
"With all that's going on? You're planning a wedding, Nick's writing a book, and you're -- I guess work isn't keeping you that busy, huh. You just have to keep the kids alive, and we all know how easy that is. I'm on year _three_!" Cece boasts, all proud of herself for like, raising a little human and actually keeping her alive this long. High-five!  
  
(Even though it’s mostly her husband. Okay, Cece loves the crap out of that kid, but her work is really taking off, and Schmidt is...well...really taking off from work. Permanently. He likes the whole ‘stay-at-home dad’ thing. It’s modern.)  
  
Jess shakes her head and fills her own wine glass to the top. "Nick's meeting didn't go so well. His new editor made like, ten-thousand changes to the book and Nick is so upset he's probably in our bedroom Googling different ways to flee the country and how to rock a cool, new alias."  
  
"Can't he find another editor?"  
  
"He could, but it'd take _forever_ to get the process going with someone else, and if they hate it, then he might off himself before the wedding and we all know how much our wedding is going to cost."  
  
Cece nods. "Schmidt gave me the exact number the other day. ' _1,250 diaper boxes_ ', he said."  
  
Jess smacks her lips together. "Ha. Something like that. Speaking of diaper boxes, are you guys really trying to get pregnant again?"

Cece looks at Jess all confused and nods over to the bottle of wine they just polished off. "If we are, I don't know anything about it. Why do _you_?"  
  
"Oh, Schmidt sent out some chain email. ' _Pass this onto twenty of your closest friends and help my wife and I conceive. Blessings._ '."  
  
The color drains from Cece's face, and just as she's yelling, "WHAT THE FU -", the sender of that email and his three-year-old mini-me wander inside Jess's front door.  
  
"MOMMY!", Ruth squeals, and she races over to Cece and jumps into her lap. Goodbye, wine night, you were fun while you lasted!  
  
"Baby! I missed you so much, did you have fun with Uncle Winnie and Aunt Aly?", Cece says in between repeated smooches onto her daughter's head.  
  
"Mhm," she nods. "They showed me their guns!”  
  
"Ohhhhh, did they, so wonderful, _great_. That's three people I want to murder, now," Cece says through gritted teeth, and Jess is trying not to crack up into her wine glass.  
  
"Honey, Winston is really _such_ a slob. Ruthie taught him manners though, right baby girl?"  
  
Ruth, still draped across her mom's lap, nods proudly. "Mhm. Aunt Aly says I'm birth control, mommy!"  
  
Cece looks right at her husband, who she wants to murder for other reasons, and widens her eyes. "Schmidt!"  
  
Ruth is going on and on about how she's 'birth control' like she's just been awarded a medal for it, and Cece tells her that's a 'big girl word' and to stop saying it before a big girl hears her doing so and it upsets them, and she quickly quiets down.

Schmidt takes a seat at Jess's dining room table and helps himself to his wife's half-full glass of wine. "Still buying the cheap stuff, J?”, he asks sourly. "You're the principal of a school and your hubby-to-be is a freakin' writer and a bar owner _and_ an accidental babysitter."  
  
"First… Where else would I be the principal of? An aquarium? Second… He offered to watch your boss's bratty kids _once_ , and now it's his new Saturday afternoon gig. Thanks a lot, you idiot," Jess scoffs.  
  
"Speaking of idiots," Cece says while simultaneously covering her three-year-old's ears. "You sent out an email to our friends about us trying to get pregnant again?! What the hell is wrong with you, Schmidt?"  
  
"Chain mail is back, Cece. It's 2020 and email is cool again. So is MySpace. I thought you knew this."

"You're such a - We're not having anymore B-A-B-I-E-S, you D-I-P-S-H-I-T," she says, just in case Ruth's trying to listen.  
  
"Ahh... marriage," Jess says with a smirk, raising a lone wine glass and laughing to herself. Is this a glimpse into the Future Miller Dining Room Table Talks three years from now?

—

  
"Jessica. Jessica. Jess! I added a chapter to the book," Nick says, and Jess rolls over and squints at him, because she doesn't have her contacts in and he's shining this really bright light right at her all excitedly.  
  
"What time is it, Nick?"  
  
"Oh, sorry honey," he says, catching himself shining the flashlight from his phone into his fiancée's eyes. "Three A.M."  
  
Jess is really exhausted. She spent the whole day drinking wine and bullshitting with Cece, and she might even still be drunk.  
  
“Wanna hear it?”, he’s asking eagerly, reaching over and turning on the lamp.  
  
“ _Oh_. Bright.”  
  
“I know. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to make some kind of movement in your sleep so I knew you weren’t dead before I tried waking you up to read it to ‘ya.”  
  
“How chivalrous of you,” she says sarcastically, sitting up with a groan. “Shoot.”  
  
“Okay, well, since this editor likes you so much, I decided I’m just gonna have to suck it up and marry you.”  
  
“Nick, people have been waiting for Knight and Pepperwood to get hitched since the first book. It’s about time.”  
  
Nick shakes his head and takes one of Jess’s hands in his. “Marriage is gonna be good, right?"  
  
"Are we still talking about Pepperwood and Knight, or...?"  
  
She gets the feeling they aren't.  
  
"Our married friends aren't as miserable as they occasionally act, baby. Marriage is just work. But so is all... this," she gestures to the whole room, the loft they share, the almost-four years they spent getting to where they are right now. (And the six years before that; the six years they loved each other so much but kept screwing it up so much.)  
  
"I think Cece might hate Schmidt, Jess," Nick says, pressing his lips together. "Did she see the email?"  
  
"She threatened to perform a vasectomy on him herself, so... yeah. I don't know why she doesn't want anymore kids. I love Ruthie."  
  
"I'm Ruth's godfather, and I love the heck out of that kid, but she straight-up called me a _dyke_ the other day."  
  
"She's... expressive," Jess defends, because she's Ruth's godmother and she also loves the heck out of that kid. "I won't send anyone emails about our sex life once we get married, I promise," she jokes.  
  
"Oh, so you'll send 'em now, then?", he jokes back, and Jess just sleepily kisses him flat on the mouth.

—

  
"I'm sorry about the email, Ceec." Schmidt hands her a cup straight from the coffeemaker, and then she asks him what time it is.  
  
"Eleven-thirty. I let you sleep. Ruth is out cake tasting with Nick and Jess, because she's the only one with any form of _taste_ out of the three."  
  
"She's three, Schmidt. She'll say she likes all of them, and then we'll be stuck with her when her sugar high sets in."  
  
"Aly and Winston made plans with her. They're taking her to the Disney store because Aly needs to go shopping for her sister's baby shower anyway and Ruth is always happier in an Elsa dress. Hey, are you still pissed at me, Cece?"  
  
Cece blows on her coffee and shrugs. "Now that you shipped our sugared-up kid out for the day...no, not really. Schmidt, I love kids, and I love Ruth, and I love you, so much, but I'm _so_ happy just like this. If someone told me five years ago I'd have - you know, you, the house, the cute - but sassy, she's all you - three-year-old, I would've laughed at them. I feel okay with all of this, Schmidt."  
  
"I mean, yeah baby, so do I, but don't ever get our kid a dog and force her to call it her sister just because you don't want to give her any other siblings."  
  
"You know you secretly love Reggie," Cece says in reference to Schmidt's mom's dog, a.k.a. "his brother", who he, by total force, kissed on the mouth twice last Christmas. (There's evidence, just go onto Jess's Facebook page.)  
  
"We'll talk about another baby when our friends start getting knocked up, okay?" Cece says, rubbing Schmidt’s back. “We can’t keep being this ahead of them all!”

—

  
"Nick's seriously freaking me out, Ceec,” Jess says, nervously tapping her nails onto the table they’re sharing at Artie’s.  
  
Cece wrinkles her nose. "Ew. Did he show you his lightning bug collection, too?"  
  
"Oh, _that_? Noooo, I helped him with that."  
  
"Of course," Cece says flatly, not the least bit surprised. "So what's wrong?"  
  
"I don't know, it just seems like he’s doubting marriage. Like, he feels like he’s walking into a giant trap, or something.”  
  
“Because marriage _is_ kind of a giant trap, Jess.”

“How can you say that? You have like, the best life ever,” she says, gesturing to the background of Cece’s lit up phone - a picture of her and Schmidt and Ruth, all hand-in-hand on a beach in Malibu. Winston took that picture, and it’s literally framed in everyone’s house, because that’s how good it is. 

“I mean…”, Cece takes a deep breath, swirling her straw in her coffee a few times before she looks right up at Jess. “It’s the best thing you’ll ever do, but it’s a promise for a lifetime.”

“Duh.”

“No, I mean, sometimes, you wake up at four-thirty in the morning, covered in each other’s drool, and your baby is wailing and neither of you want to get up, but it was his turn before this time so it’s on you, and you really want to kill him for not taking one for the team, and then your baby pees on you."

“Sounds like something you’re specifically familiar with,” Jess jokes, stretching her arm across the table and squeezing Cece’s left hand, purposely rubbing her thumb over her wedding ring.

“Some days you’re really going to love each other. Some days, I wake up at five for work and Schmidt’s cutting Ruth’s PB&J into shapes because she won’t eat it if it’s not. I love him. He loves her so much, and I - I never thought I’d be close enough to a man to trust him to love my little girl as much as I do.

But sometimes… Jess. Sometimes I wanna murder him. Like, that stupid email he sent out about knocking me up?! I wanted to buy him a one way ticket to hell. I love Schmidt, and I love anything that's half-me and half-Schmidt, but I really don't want another one. Not right now, anyway."

"Ruth really is the best," Jess agrees.

Cece nods and says, "I don't ever doubt that for a second", and Jess loves how genuine she is when she talks about her daughter. "And marriage is too, Jess. It's just... work. You just have to be in.  _All in_."

Jess bites down on her lip, and she’s still holding Cece’s hand. She’s thinking about the fact that in three weeks -- less; two weeks and four days -- she’ll be Nick’s wife. “If mine and Nick’s marriage is anything like yours… I think we’ll be okay.”

—

  
If Jess isn’t ten minutes early, she’s late.

If Cece isn’t thirty minutes late, well… that means she stopped being a mom.

Aly gets there a few minutes after Jess does, and Sadie’s the one who drove Jess, so the two of them are waiting for their dresses from the back.

“Hey.” Aly takes a sip from the water bottle she’s carrying and nods over to Jess. “Where’s your flower girl? Winston wanted me to tell her a cat joke, but… never mind, I forgot the joke. Anyway, how long is this gonna take? I have work at two.”

“We’re here, we’re here!” Cece races in, Ruth in one arm and Jess’s checkbook in the other. “Nick threw this at me from your car window. He says it’s ‘on him’.”

“It’s ‘on Nick’ because he thinks wedding dresses cost as much as a Happy Meal does,” Aly says, rolling her eyes and grabbing Ruth from a struggling Cece’s arms.

“He’s in the parking lot?!”, Jess asks frantically. “I told him to go home.”

Cece shrugs. “So did Ruth.”

“Oh, yeah?”, Jess laughs, reaching over and grabbing her goddaughter from Aly, poking her in the tummy jokingly. “And what’d you tell Uncle Nick?”  
  
“NO BOYS ALLOWED!”, Ruth chants. “Where’s my dress, mommy?”

Cece, the first one to grab the bubbly and twist it open, looks at her daughter and shrugs. “It’s coming, baby. Are you so excited?!”

“Mhm.” Ruth nods and swivels herself around so both of her legs are wrapped around Jess’s torso. “Mommy said we get _cake_.”

Anytime little kids mention food, it doesn't mean they're inquiring about whether you have that food available or not. No, it means it's in front of them, they  _know_ it's in front of them, and they want it.  _Now_.

“I’m so excited we get to finally try our dresses on together,” Jess says excitedly as two girls bring out all of their altered dresses from the back. “I can’t believe this is the last fitting before the wedding! Mostly because we have to pay a crapload of money for these things today.”

Sadie’s slipping into her dress as Cece’s badgering one of the workers about the complimentary cake.

“BEEEE-YOU-TIFUL,” Jess says, clapping her hands together. “Your boobs look _awesome_.”

Aly is next. One of the girls in the fitting room is halfway done tugging her zipper up, and then she stops. “Um. Ma’am?”

Aly's just quiet, and this poor employee is struggling to get the zipper past the small of her back, and now everyone’s looking right at them.

“I don’t mean to -- you know. When’s the last time you tried this on?”, the girl asks.

“Like, a month ago. And if this is going to turn into someone calling me chubby, I will rip the sequins right off of this dress and --”

Jess says nothing, just sits down on one of the ottomans and grabs a glass of champagne off of the table. Sadie joins her, and then Cece, who sits Ruth in her lap, and they’re all kind of just… looking.

“Hey. Can we have a second?”, Cece asks, waving the employee away from their little circle. It takes a second for her to get the hint, but then she nods and goes into a fitting room a few doors down.

“The dress fit last time we were here, you guys. I spend sixteen hours a day running after the lunatics of Los Angeles. There’s no way I gained so much weight that thing doesn’t fit anymore.”

Jess is just wide-eyed, mostly because she feels bad for Aly. (Well...mostly because her wedding is in two weeks and Aly is a very important part and she may land herself in jail by killing the employee who implied she was too fat for the dress.)

“Um.” Cece shifts Ruth around in her lap and distracts her with a piece of wedding cake, holding the plate steady as she looks up at Aly. “Are you having a baby?”  
  
Aly, reaching her hands behind her awkwardly to tug at the zipper herself, shakes her head frantically. “What?”

“I mean,” Cece clarifies, “are you pregnant?”

Everyone is still quiet, but Aly’s face drops. “I… really hope not?”

—

  
Jess is running late this time, and when she pulls up to the beach, Nick is waiting for her.

“Hey honey. Thought you ditched me.” He pulls her in for a tight hug and just takes this long breath, holding her close to him.

This is _the_ beach. It feels like yesterday when Nick jumped in the ocean because Jess and Schmidt and Winston convinced him he was dying of cancer. It feels like yesterday when they fell asleep here, right on the sand; when Jess pretended not to feel his hand on the small of her back for most of the night. It feels like yesterday when Nick told Jess he liked having her around, for the first time of many. She knew, at the time, because life was a little less hopeless than normal for both of them, but it still felt nice to hear.

“I brought your book. You forgot it.” He holds a gold polka-dotted notebook up to view and waves it at her. It says, “ _The Day-Miller Wedding_ ” on it in Jess’s loopy handwriting.

“I always forget things,” she says, rubbing her lips together and grabbing the notebook from him. “Is everything good to go?”

“Besides the sand-shaped pedestal Winston wants his cat to stand on during the ceremony? Yeah.” He laughs at that, and he hopes she can too, because she’s had a weird forty-eight hours.

“Is Winston even _coming_?”, he asks after she doesn’t laugh. She just shrugs. “Can’t Aly get a new dress?”

Jess rubs her temples and shakes her head, letting out this piercing breath and looking up at her husband-to-be with a shrug. “She won’t even answer mine or Cece’s calls. I don’t think it’s hit her that she’s pregnant yet. Or it _has_ , and she's pissed at the universe about it.”

“The whole back being open on a dress, that’s - that’s a thing,” Nick says, horribly and inaccurately tugging the back of his shirt down to mock what he thinks is appropriate for a pregnant bridesmaid to wear at their wedding.

“I don’t care who wears what, Nick.” Jess drops her notebook in the sand and walks back over to him, scooping him in a giant hug. “We could get married butt-naked in the ocean at this point. We could eat that unicorn cake Ruth liked. Furguson could meow our freakin’ vows. I don’t care.”

Nick kisses the top of her head, and then she immediately regrets telling him they can get married naked, because he actually would. “I love you, Jessica. So much.”

“I love you too, Miller.”

"It's gonna be okay, okay? I'm all in - whether that means the whole beach washes up as we say 'I do' or not. I'm in, Jess, for the rest of my life."

—

Schmidt freaks out when there’s a knock at the door past five o’clock usually, and now it’s eight and someone’s banging on their front door like a lunatic, and Ruth is all worked up because her daddy is all worked up.

“I bet it’s the _youths_ ,” he tells his wife, who, much more calmly, walks over to the front door and opens it.

“Aly! Are you finally done avoiding me? Wait. Schmidt? Honey, go get it.” Cece waves over to him, and he races into their bedroom and comes out a minute later with a huge garment bag.

“I know Jess already put a deposit on your first dress, and we didn’t want to stress her out even more, so Schmidt and I went back bought this one for you. It’s a size up, and it should fit. You might not have the pregnancy boobs to fill it out yet, but…”

Schmidt levels a hand matter-of-factly. "Not everyone's blessed with Cece's natural P-Boobs."

Aly shakes her head, one hand gripping the garment bag and one hand in the pocket of her jeans. “I freaked out because babies freak me out, a little.”

Cece wrinkles her nose and feels bad for saying it, but she goes, “They freaked me out too.”

“When I told Winston, though… He’s _so_ happy, you guys. Like, every day for the last four days he’s just done this happy dance before work, and he kisses the baby and talks to the baby -- Well, more like ‘reads weird bird books to the baby’, but it’s still cute.”

“We’re seriously so happy for you guys,” Cece says, pulling Aly in for a hug. “I know it’s weird right now, but it’ll get less weird and less weird until one day it isn’t weird at all.”

“Yeah, and now Winston can stop calling that atrocious cat his son.”

Aly looks at Schmidt super seriously and just widens her eyes. “Furguson _is_ his son.”

“Great.” Schmidt smacks his own forehead. “Does this mean he still gets a special pedestal at the wedding? Where is _my_ pedestal, dammit?!”

—

They're all here. 

Schmidt is on his Best Man Headset™ ( _Really...?_ ). Cece is bobby-pinning a flower crown in her daughter's hair. Aly is ditching the heels she wore here for a pair of Converse, because Jess is a cool bride that doesn't care what her bridesmaid's feet look like in pictures, and she's pregnant as hell and her ankles _kill_. Winston is putting his cat in a tux, despite Nick texting him last night:  **NO TUX, CAT PEDESTAL. TUX, CAT GO BYE-BYE IN OCEAN.**

Jess's parents and Nick's mom are carefully spreading flower petals along the white cloth of the aisle, in case Ruth The Flower Girl throws a tantrum like she did at dress rehearsal and decides to dump all the flowers out  _her_ _way_ \- On Schmidt's mom's lap, and then she cried about how it's not fair that  _she_ doesn't get a wedding.

"B.M. TO GROOM, B.M. TO GROOM." Schmidt's holding his hands over his ears, basically screaming into his headset, and Cece tells him to come help her with Ruth's hair because he's better at it. "Cece, where the hell are they? Ruth, baby, hold still for daddy."

Ruth is being an angel (a fidgety one), but she's letting Schmidt pin her crown on her head, and then he and Cece step back and look at their daughter once he's done.

"She's so cute."

"She's _s_ _o_ cute," Cece repeats, her eyes welling up with tears as she looks at her three-year-old in a long-sleeved, flowy, sequined flower girl dress. Jess picked it out, and it's the best. "Let mommy take your picture, okay?"

"Only if the kitty comes too," Ruth protests, and Winston hands a tux-clad Furguson over to Ruth, and the kid's never been happier.

Ten minutes later and the beach is the perfect setting. It's almost sunset, a piano version of _Time Of My Life_ is playing, white petals are spread all over the sand, and a collage of Jess and Nick's engagement photos is propped up behind a lit-up frame at the end of the aisle.

Jess's mom is getting ready to walk down the aisle, but not before Schmidt shakes his head and stops everyone in their tracks.

"Has anyone seen... you know...  _thE FRIGGIN' BRIDE AND GROOM?_ _!_ "

"Now that you mention it...", Winston says all casually, holding the flower girl in one arm and his cat in the other. "You know what? I haven't, man! You think they in traffic?!"

—

"Okay. All of you  _stay_ calm. No yelling into the phone -  _SCHMIDT_."

"I can't help myself. The candles on the altar will blow out with  _one_ wave. We're on a time crunch here, Cece!"

"The traffic is easing up, bro. They're probably in the parking lot."

"Please, go jump in the ocean, Winst - Oh, oh, look who it is, it's  _Nick_. Dumb little boy. Hello?!"

. . .

“WE ELOPED! No, seriously. We’re calling you from the back of a van in Mexico, and -“  
  
”I have sand in my asscheeks,” Nick interrupts. “In. My. _Asscheeks_.”  
  
”So much easier than having a stupid wedding, huh? We’ll see you when we get back from Mexico. We’re also super drunk, so we hope we didn’t call anyone super powerful or important - just you clowns! Byeeeee!”  
  
”Don’t clean our room while we’re gone, SCHMIDT.”  
  
"He's just kidding - our room is already clean. This van, though," Jess says, "is a different story. Voicemail, done. J-Day - oops, I mean, J-Mills out."

"Adios, you sons of bitches! Have fun at the wedding  _without us_!", Nick yells, and then the phone call cuts off.


End file.
